Great Andromeda Galaxy
The Great Andromeda Galaxy is the brightest naked-eye spiral galaxy with an apparent magnitude of 3.4. Located in the constellation Andromeda, the galaxy lies at a distance of approximately 2.5 million light years from Earth. Also known as M31 or NGC 224, the Andromeda Galaxy is part of the Local Group of galaxies of which includes our own Milky Way Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy and others.
The Andromeda Galaxy has two satellite elliptical galaxies, both of which are visible in the photo above. The closer one (visible along the lower edge of 'Andromeda') is known as M32 or NGC 221. The more distant galaxy (upper right of 'Andromeda') is M110 or NGC 205.
Technical Details
- Object: Great Andromeda Galaxy
- Object Type: Spiral Galaxy
- Other Names: M31, NGC 224
- Date/Time: 2011 Jan 24 at 02:26 UTC
- Location: Bifrost Astronomical Observatory, Portal, AZ
- Telescope: Takahashi Epsilon 180 ED Hyperbolic Astrograph
- Mount: Astro-Physics 1200GTO
- Camera: Nikon D300
- Exposure: 2 x (8 x 300s), f/2.8, ISO 800
- File Name: M31-02w.jpg
- Processing: 2-Frame Mosaic, Stack of 8 Images per Frame, Cropping, Levels, Unsharp Mask (Photoshop CS5)
- Original Image Size: 4366 x 4801 pixels (21.0 MP); 14.6" x 16.0" @ 300 dpi
- Rights: Copyright 2011 by Fred Espenak. All Rights Reserved. See: Image Licensing.
